Fallen is Babylon

Episode 01 – Sand Cascades Through Fingers

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The bullet, enveloped by a blood-red light only visible as an afterglow, whipped over Bima Sukarno's head, and he sunk deeper into the hole behind the bullet-riddled wall, clutching his Device closer against his chest. He gasped a few sudden, shuddery breaths, and nodded to the brunette, her face covered in dirt, beside him.

"They've gotta be running low on Cartridges," he groaned, as another spray of dirt splattered over the pair.

Haze hung heavy in the air over the ruined outskirts of the city of Yakartya. Towards the centre, the local branch of the Kiruelian Duchy ruled, and imposed their military law on the city centre, but out here, it was the province of small bands, almost tribes, of survivors of the collapse of civilisation. Kabupaten had been an outskirts world, bought into the Belkan Empire only by the threat of the Saint's Cradle, and so had drifted away first, the armed forces turning against each other in bloody coup after bloody coup, splitting and subdividing. It had always been a rare sight to see the sparkle in the night's sky that was a dimensional cruiser; now, it was utterly unheard of. Perhaps, before Belka had come, Kabupaten could have survived such a collapse, but the centralising instincts of the earlier Sankt Kaisers had held that no such world, far away from their influence, should be fully viable on its own. And the rapid expansion of magical technology had only succeeded in making its withdrawal more painful.

Nirmala shook her head. "They're Duchy forces," she spat. "They've got factory lines churning them out... and they found another Imperial cache recently." Reaching to her left, she pried open Baumaschinen's back, the silver-skinned, white-plated automaton marred by gashes and crude repairs with scrap metal. "I can load him up with another cartridge, but then I'm out. And I'm going to be needing repairs for him pree~eety damn urgent."

Bima patted his pockets. "I've got two left, but..." he frowned, pulling out the two cylinders, "...my Device can't use Lossprechung-type cartridges without damaging the central core."

"Baumaschinen can't use them either," Nirmala replied, her face falling. "I mean, I think I could probably work out a way to tap them to recharge his Mangel-type cartridges, but... I'd burn out his motive systems if I stuck them straight in... wouldn't I, Bau?"

"Ja, mein Betreiber," the modified construction Device told his operator, still lying face down, as she tried to reattach the servos in his right arm.

Bima stared up, sighing. Even through the dust that filled the air, he could see the hints of sun, poking through the unfairly white clouds. It had been going so well. Nirmala and him had been just going to check on one of the food sites, crude hydroponic laboratories set up in basements in the ruins out the outer city. They'd even managed to find, when cutting through the dried-up, and once-glorious canals of the city, a dead Duchy soldier. The woman had obviously crawled off to die, several weeks earlier, and on the putrid remains of her corpse, they had found several Cartridges, as well as the rifle now slung on Nirmala's back. It wasn't a proper, Belkan-quality Device; just one of the cheap, mass-production Storage Devices that the factories of the Duchy churned out, cannibalising what materials remained. Nirmala had been forced to shut off the intelligence, to stop it raising an alarm, and neither of them were good enough mages to be able to be able to use the systems on their own. She could just about control Baumaschinen and keep him running, and he... he was just a Knight Inferior, barely better than a civilian, and basically identical to the Duchy goons taking potshots at them.

Apart from the fact that the Duchy soldiers were better trained, supplied, fed, and armed than him, of course.

And then they'd found that the Duchy had found the food site, and things had gone downhill from there. The only mercy was that they hadn't deployed air cover, and had only bought up another car of troops... but that was to be expected. Aircraft were products of the Belkan Empire, whose thrashing death-spasms had only ended with the last of the Sankt-Kaisers, Olivie, twenty-three years previously. The Kiruelian Duchy, one of the petty empires led by local generals, lacked the knowledge and the resources to replicate the wonders of the past.

He checked his magazine. Two Cartridges left in the internal clip, and nothing spare for the magic; one magazine and one spare for the mass-weapon built-in. Barrier Jacket integrity... poor, even by his standards. That gave him an idea.

"Nirm, can you get Bau working again?" he asked. "As in... soon?"

There was a flare of silvery-grey light beside him, the triangular shape of magic appearing over the skin of the fallen automaton. "Uh... give me a sec," Nirmala said, sticking an oil-covered hand wrapped in protective light, into the insides. "I've... ouch, hot... I've just about... yes! That's it." There was a shriek of metal, as she pulled on the carapace. "You know that bit I had to patch up with the stuff from a car?"

"Vaguely, yeah." He poked his head up, wishing that he had a Device smart enough to be able to identify threats from a distance without direct line of sight, and immediately ducked back down, as a rattle of gunfire danced above his head. The Duchy forces were leapfrogging across the plaza, small fire teams covering each other. Their mottled grey-and-black cloaks, and matt-crimson armour, were surprisingly hard to see unless you knew what you were looking for, but there was certainly a squad in the fountain, and what looked like another working its way through the ruins of a shop-front.. And behind them... oh dear. "Nirm, I hate to bother you, but they're moving up. Armoured car, squad escorting it. Squad leader's got a custom, looks like some kind of polearm."

Nirmala swore under her breath. If they had a custom Device, that meant they were skilled. "That's bad. I had to strip the generators from Bau's CC attachment to get his legs working again."

Bima twirled, eyes wide with shock. "What?" he groaned.

"You heard me, all right?" the woman shouted back, her eyes suddenly looking tired. "Bau... he's falling apart. I can't keep him running forever. Not without proper parts."

The man... not really much more than a boy, neither of them had been born before the death of Olivie, sighed, and let his head fall. "Right," he said. "But you can keep him walking, and he can still fire, right?"

"Yeah, that for sure."

"Okay." He swallowed. "What I'm going to do, is drop my Barrier Jacket. With the energy I free up, I should be able to get a shield up which should last for a few shots, even from an armoured car." He gave a wavering grin. "Just a directional shield, though. Never could do a bubble shield."

The dark-haired girl rested a hand on his greenish-grey sleeve, leaving oily prints, which ran off the Barrier Jacket like mercury droplets. "You sure?" she asked him. They both knew that he'd be drained after this, and wouldn't be able to support a Jacket until he could build up some strength. Even if they managed to hold off the Duchy forces, if they met anyone else before they could get back to safety, he'd be as good as a sitting target.

"Oh, come on, Nirm." He clutched his Device closer. "We're both using stolen Duchy stuff. You know what they'd do to us if they got their hands on us?"

The girl swallowed, and nodded. "'Kay." She looked down, at the Construction Device besides her. "Baumaschinen, reactivate motive systems, and prepare for combat."

"Ja, mein Betreiber." The bulky, three-metre tall figure pulled itself up, towering over the two slight figures, behind the solid part of the wall. That was the advantage of Baumaschinen; the hulking Device tended to attract fire which would otherwise have hit them. Which, of course, caused the necessity for repairs with parts they didn't have.

"Warnung! Mein Schweiß-Tools funktionieren nicht. Nieteneinschläger reichten für die Nutzung geändert. Unerlaubte Änderungen sind in meinen Rahmen. Ich bin ... 3,749 ... Tage überfällig für meinen Unterhalt zu überprüfen," the automaton reported, the error tool which they had never been able to turn off giving a dismal status report. His class of Construction Device was meant to have a proper check with a registered maintenance dealer every 150 days. That had... obviously, not happened in far too long.

"I know, Bau," Nirmala said, sadly. "We'll try to see if we can find enough of an intact car or something to get some components for you."

"Ich danke Ihnen, meine Betreiber."

Nirmala looked sideways at her companion. "Ready, then?" she asked, pulling the rifle around. She didn't have the magic to spare to use its Device functions, with the need to keep Baumaschinen running, even if the gun-Device had been operational, but it was still a rifle, and thus better than the handgun she carried normally. "We take out the car, and then run?"

"Yep. Head for the canals. Should be able to lose them in the maintenance tunnels."

"Makes sense." She swallowed. "Ready when you are."

Bima reached down, and took a swig of water from the flask at his hip. He really didn't need to end up with a dry mouth in battle, and botch a spell because of it. "Jacket Purge," he whispered to himself, and his greyish-green cloak and armour faded away, to be replaced by... a remarkably similar cloak, and loose clothing underneath. "Load Cartridge." The bolt on his rifle cycled, ejecting the old, spent shell with a vent of steam, and bringing in a new one.

He nodded. She nodded. And with a twirl, they both stood up, peeking through holes in the ruined wall, even as Baumaschinen burst through it.

"Sechseckigen Schild," Bima roared, hand held out, and a glowing orange shield appeared over Bau's front, composed of two triangles held together, the characteristic runes and wardings of Belkan magic casting a fire-light light over the area.

"Geändert Konstruktion Niet!" ordered Nirmala, motes of light dancing forth to hover over Duchy troops and their car, as she opened up, rattling bursts from her automatic rifle sending them scurrying for cover. Although, in truth, they were running more from Baumaschinen. Although he may have begun life as a construction unit designed to build ships, as some point since the fall of civilisation, he had been modified to kill things. And, as it turned out, a naval welding arc and riveter (especially when the rivet gun was... overclocked) were remarkably dangerous tools, even if he was designed to be run when connected up to a power grid which no longer existed, and so took almost all of Nirmala's skills just to keep moving.

Raising its right arm, the Device aimed for the armoured car. A thudding, stattaco beat of 'tchunk... tchunk... tchunk' started, as naval rivets, enveloped in the steel-grey glow of Nirmala's magic, began to impact into the car, thudding into the engine block. A hastily throw-up orange-red shield lasted a few seconds, before the relentless impact of something designed to stick very large pieces of metal together bought it down, and the car's engine died. There was counterfire, though, as bullets rattled off the hexagonal shield, and Bima panted. He was pushing to his limits to keep a shield like this up.

"Pull... pull Bau back. I... can't hold much longer." He wasn't a support knight, for goodness sake. He wasn't even a proper knight, to be even more exact. There were tales of knights who could put up shields which could survive being at ground zero of a bombardment from orbit. With perfect clarity, he could say that he was not one of them. A few bullets was enough of a challenge, and he was feeling very, very vulnerable without a Barrier Jacket out here.

A voice rang out over the ruins of the city. "Feuer Spurt!" With a flare of orange-red light which left footprints in their air, the leader of the squad dashed forth, spear held under arm, like a lance, and slammed it into the hexagonal shield, breaking through and whipping it around to sever clean through Baumachinen's right arm. "Anzünden!" and the tip of her spear flared like magnesium, the brightness only dimmed as she whipped it around into the Construction Device.

"Damn it!" screamed Nirmala, wincing with sympathetic pain as control systems melted, the long-abused automaton giving up, as the red lights which made up his face turned off. She swung the rifle towards the figure in its crimson armour, and let out a long, rattling burst, which ended with the clicking of the empty rifle, swearing incoherently.

The masked figure wagged one finger on its outstretched palm, letting the shield die away. "Surrender," it (and it was a she), stated, in a clear, pleasant sounding voice. "You don't need to do this."

"You killed him!" Nirmala yelled back.

"I deactivated a broken, illegally modified Device," the figure corrected her. "The fact that people loot Construction Devices like this one, and turn them into weapons of war like this, is one of the main problems we must face." She coughed. "It's lucky that you didn't hurt any of my men," she added, in a cold tone. "We wouldn't be having this conversation if you had."

"You think I care?" the girl screamed back. "You killed him."

"I'm giving you one chance," the masked woman said, ignoring the last comment. "Surrender. Look at you... I can see you both through the wall, and there are only two of you. Your friend, the silent one, had to even let his Barrier Jacket drop to pull off that shield... and, yes, it was impressive, for how sloppy it was. You're barely trained, either of you."

Panting, Bima dropped back down, his Device falling to his side, with a clatter. "Well... what do we do?" he asked. "Someone like that... we don't have a chance. Not even if we were fully rested, and Bau was working." He paused. "I bet she can even fly. So we can't even run away. Maybe..."

"Shut up!" yelled Nirmala. "I'm never surrendering to the Duchy!" Grabbing the fallen Device off him, she checked hefted it, a silver-glowing touch to the side brining up the internal statistics. "24 rounds, 1 Cartridge. Well, it's going to have to be enough."

"Nirm... that's my... what..." The boy paused. "No. Don't do this."

"Neue Herrin zugelassen," reported the dumb Device, the lights on the side changing colour from orange to silver to show the change in user.

"Bima, you can run," she said, voice low, and filled with anger. "I'll slow them down... they don't get to get me too. Tell the others that the Duchy is coming, that they're expanding, out into the ruins. And," her lips parted slightly, "Bima?"

"Yes?" he asked, dreading what she was about to say.

"Hands off my stu.."

A cry of "Notwendige Einschränkung!" interrupted the statement, as red bonds appeared from nowhere, pinning them against the ground, snaking and coiling unpleasantly like warm flesh over their limbs. With a frustrated scream, Nirmala writhed and tossed, her silvery-white magic briefly flaring before being snuffed by the overwhelming red.

"Bind successful, Sister-Major," reported a male voice, from somewhere above them.

"Well done, Harta," called back the masked woman. "I think the girl was going to do something stupid. Get them to bring up the support truck, so we can move this Construction Device. These two should be going straight to one of the Detention Facilities, until we can work out who they are, and whether they're a threat."

Nirmala screamed in frustration at those words.

"And the girl seems to have some kind of objection to that," the man... Harta, she had called him, said. "Isn't that a shame." They could see him now; hands glowing red as he crawled on the ceiling above them, a white half-mask covering his face in stark contrast to the dull red and black jumpsuit he wore.

"One of the Spiders," Nirmala muttered, her dark face turning pale.

"Yep," the man replied, as he dropped down, into a crouch before them, a cheerful grin on what they could see of his face. With a wave of his hand, the red bonds solidified around them, merging and growing into a red octahedron which left them suspended, frozen in place. "Brother-Captain Harta Aceh of the Spiders, and I'll be your capturer for today."

"Harta, get them out of here, and stop flirting with the prisoners," the Sister-Major yelled from outside. "I swear, sometimes you're..." The woman screamed in shock, as her Device automatically threw up a shield; the only thing stopping the long-bladed glaive, shining like the sun, from cleaving into her. The impact was still enough to break the shield, though, and send her crashing back, slamming into the ruined armoured car, which folded like a tin-can around her.

There was a sudden eruption of automatic rifles, and the hiss and slam of fresh cartridges, as the lesser Duchy troops spun to defend their leader.

"Sonneneruption!" someone cried from outside, and the burst of light painted dark shadows of the ruined wall. A series of explosions followed that cry, the wash of heat noticeable even this far away.

Both Nirmala and Bima grinned at that sound, even as they tumbled to the ground, as the magic bonds disintegrated, as the Spider flipped up backwards, red-light flaring around his hands, as he scuttled upwards. Nirmala was the first to recover, and rolled over to the Device, grabbing it up and propping herself against the ruined wall, getting a good line of site over the plaza.

The Sister-Major was back on her feet, spear blazing with orange-red fire, with an intensity which nearly matched the golden-white glow of the newcomer. "I am an officer in the Duchy of Kiruel," she managed, point of her weapon dancing an erratic jig in front of her, "and I am requesting your surrender."

The other knight was clad in white and gold, her greying dark hair tied behind her in a tight bun. She was paler skinned than the dominant ethnic group on her planet, and the set of her features was subtly off, as if she was not quite related to any of the common ethnicities. The flowing golden cloth she wore cascaded over armour the colour of fallen snow, only marred by a sunburst in the middle, with the characters LV in the centre of the sun.

"I... I have no idea who you are," she said, holding her glaive in front of her. The cartridge mechanism cycled, and ejected the empty shell, the hum of a fresh one audible. "But you're in my way, lackey of Kiruel." The woman slammed the bottom of her weapon down into the road, cracking it further. "And that's not somewhere you want to be."

"In that case," the Duchy soldier groaned, wheezing in pain, "I challenge you to a formal duel, under Section 117-b of the Code of Honour of Imperial Belka. I am fulfilling my duties, and you stand in my way."

The dark-haired woman laughed, a ringing note in the ruined plaza, even as her weapon remained perfectly level. "Under the Code of Honour of Imperial Belka, you, and the rest of you Duchy fools, are all traitors, who have abandoned the Sankt Kaisers. So... no. I will not permit you to heal and rest. And I most certainly won't let you delay me as you telepathically call for back-up."

The grin in the other woman's voice was audible, even through what was almost certainly a broken rub or two. "Worth a try."

"Nirm!" Bima whispered furiously. "Shouldn't we be running?"

"I'm not leaving Bau!" she hissed back. "And I can be useful... I can distract her for Elizibét. But I'm getting Bau's core, at least!"

"But what if the Spider comes back? And you have my Device, by the way."

She sighed. "If the Spider comes back, we're doomed. Like we can run away from someone who can use Binds like that. It's what those things do," she said, through narrowed eyes, "Pick off people when they try to run." Nirmala took a deep breath. "Stealth Mode," she said, and a long-sleeved, hooded cloak, the colour of the ruins, formed in a flare of slivery-white light, concealing the loose, practical garments that made up her Operator Mode Barrier Jacket. Reaching back, she pulled the hood deep over her face, and sunk down, the cloak pooling on the ground around her. "You can try to get that one working," she added, as she slipped through the hole in the wall, referring to the one which they had only just obtained.

That wasn't going to work, and both of them knew it. One did not attempt field hacks of Duchy Devices because... well, one just didn't. Another brilliant flash of light illuminated the wall in front of him, and Bima huddled down, tucked up in his own, mundane cloak, and pulled out a ration bar. He wasn't going to be any use at all if he couldn't even maintain a Barrier Jacket, and food always helped.

The sun-bright blade of the glaive met the black-metal shaft of the spear, and both rebounded, sending the two women flying away from each other, up into the air, where they found their footing on nothingness. The Sister-Major was fighting defensively, one arm tucked up against her body, up against her ribs, and trying to keep her distance, against the aggression of the stranger. The fact that she chose to use a two handed weapon was playing against her now; if she had been using a one-handed weapon, she might have been able to at least compress her broken ribs, but as it was, spurts of agony shot up her side every time they clashed.

For her own part, Elizabét Luthor, the woman in the golden clothes and white armour, was getting frustrated. Even injured as she was, the dog of the Duchy was still managing to hold her off. It didn't help that the other woman had a surplus of Cartridges, while she was running low; in fact, she could see what looked like two surplus revolver cylinders sitting at her hip. It meant she had to keep up the offensive, or she could reload.

"Plasmastrahl" her Device stated, in its calm, emotionless voice, as she swung the tip in a figure of eight, the loop whipping out with surprisingly speed towards the red-armoured figure's neck. A shouted "Feuer Spurt!", leaving the same flaming trail of footprints behind her was all that kept the lash from entangling the Sister-Major, who slammed into the ground, aged concrete breaking beneath her impact, and rolled. Elizabét smiled. It was obvious that the other woman was running for the ruined armoured car. Yes... yes, that made sense. She was heading for the heavy weapon.

It was time to finish this.

"Himmlisch Lanze..." her glaive vented steam, as she loaded two fresh Cartridges, "...Überlast!" Falling like a dying star, like the first ray of light as the clouds open, entire body forming one perfect arrow which crashed like thunder.

"Schrotflinteform!" she head a male voice say, words slow, as her heightened senses filled her world. Slowly... so slowly, like a child moving through tar, she saw the other woman turn, spear raised high.

No. It wasn't a spear any more. Not properly. Two tubular protrusions were where the spear head used to be, and a large circular drum had somehow appeared, as the Device shifted form.

Oh my...

Both barrels of the mass-weapon roared, a tight swarm of projectiles like a horde of angry bees, wrapped in the same orange-red fire the woman used to enhance her attacks. And she was already committed, unable to abort her attack or dodge.

Elizabét was willing to admit that she had been wrong. This was a worthy opponent, she thought, just as the blast slammed into her. The Barrier Jacket took the brunt of the force, damaged and shredded though it was, but the impact was enough to interrupt her dive, slamming her, perhaps ironically, into the same armoured car she had sent the Sister-Major into, not a minute earlier.

The Duchy soldier whipped her weapon around, wrapped in the venting steam of her Device, as she snapped it open, and slammed in a fresh revolver cylinder of Cartridges with a speed which spoke of muscle memory. Two empty mass-weapon cartridges also bounced on the floor, ejected from the side ports.

"Didn't expect that, did you?" the red-armoured woman sneered. "Harta, where in Olivie's name are you!"

"Right here, Sister-Major," the man said, a smile on the visible half of his face. "Very nicely done, if I might say so myself."

"No, you may not," the woman rasped, hand clutched to the side of her chest. "Go and bind her, make sure she's properly unconscious. I think I broke another rib firing it like that. Kaisers, she has to be a Bishop-Superior, at the very least. Maybe even a Tower." Slumping down by the side of the fountain, she coughed, weakly. "What the hell is someone like that doing out here?"

"I honestly don't know, Sister-Major," the man said, cautiously pacing over to the fallen woman, hands already enveloped in red light. Looking closer, it could be seen that his Device was, in fact, his gloves, the prominent red crystals on the backs of his hands, and ruby-radiant wires giving away his location. "Sun falls, fire dies, that which once was is no more," he said, softly, to himself. "But all of us are bound to fate forever. And the puppet cannot escape his strings." The light which he gave off briefly lit up the entire plaza, as if from some strange, fell, dying sun. "Sensorisch Entziehung!"

The crimson radiance coalesced around the fallen woman, forming a coffin-like crystal. And then, suddenly, it went opaque.

" Die Abdichtung ist abgeschlossen, mein Herr" the man's device informed him, the male voice pleasant and reasonable.

"Thank you, Zehn Nächte," Harta said, relaxing as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. With a hiss, a pair of cartridges were emitted from his gloves. "She should be constrained for at least ten hours," he told his superior, who was still slumped down by the ruined fountain. "Have you..."

"Yes, of course I've called for reinforcements," she snapped. "And a medical team." She swallowed. "Sorry, Harta. Yes, I have. They're sending a gunship," she added, with a hint of amazement in her voice. The woman paused. "Have you caught the other ones?" she added.

The man shook his head. "They seem to have given me the slip," he said, smoothly. "Doesn't matter. You saw how useless they were. But a captive like this... one like this is a serious threat to the security of the Duchy. She's top priority."

The same thoughts were passing through the heads of Nirmala and Bima, though from a rather different perspective, as they huddled, down in the darkness of the water inflows for old canal network. The canals may have been an artificial thing, a product of municipal hubris, but they were still only just above the water table, and so were damp, mouldy, and cold. Nirmala, at least, was nearly in tears.

"They have Elizabét," she kept on saying, over and over again, as she stroked the metal cube which was the central core of Baumaschinen's intelligence. Such as there was a thing, of course; in Bima's opinion, the girl liked, and emoted with Devices a little too much for it to be quite healthy.

"I know," he said, out loud. "But... a Spider? And a Sister-Major? We can't do anything."

"And we're doomed if we don't have her!" Nirmala lashed back. "Come on. Without her, what's the best that we can put out? Kasih? She got trained in power-flow management, not fighting. Tirto? He's nine." She glanced up at the boy with tear-filled eyes. "And we owe her... all of us. And we owe them. We owe them a lot." The final words were said with a certain relish.

Bima leaned forwards, and grabbed her shoulder. "Listen to me," he said, quietly. "We'll get her back. We have to. We can't do it now, though. I'm still tired enough that I can't even sustain a Barrier Jacket. You don't have a Device. We're almost out of Cartridges." He paused. "We should head back, warn people of what the Duchy is doing. And then... well, there are lots of people who own Elizabét favours. They will help us, right?" There was a forced optimism in the last words.

"Yeah... yeah, you're right." Nirmala wiped her eyes against her sleeve. "We'll get her back."

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